


Playwright

by toesohnoes



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-21
Updated: 2011-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-17 04:24:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/172878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toesohnoes/pseuds/toesohnoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karofsky follows the script life gave to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playwright

Karofsky swears and curses and fucking grunts all the way home, his hands in fists, his mind a mess.

Goddamn Hummel. Stupid, bitch-ass goddamn Hummel.

He's skipping class and he really doesn't care, because the alternative option is sitting there in the same room as Hummel, watching that wounded Bambi expression on his face. He thinks seeing it for another second might make him sick - it's already stained onto his eyelids, haunting his thoughts. He can't get a second's peace from thoughts of Hummel. This is it, he thinks as he kicks at a stone on the sidewalk. This is the moment where he's finally going to lose his mind.

With his hands curled in fists inside his pockets, he thinks he might already have lost it. He doesn't know what the hell he was thinking back there - kissing Hummel had been a bone-headed move. Impulsive and weak and stupid, and completely Hummel's fault. The guy just had to go ahead and grow a backbone. Couldn't stick to throwing weak insults in their wake, had to grow a pair and get up in his face.

Karofsky wouldn't have done a damn thing if Kurt hadn't made him.

He could have gone through his whole life without ever letting those thoughts to the surface, until Kurt ruined it all. Ruined his mind. Ruined his life.

 _Fuck._

*

He slams his bedroom door when he leaves the table after dinner, and the sound echoes through the house; he can hear his dad yelling and his little sister crying and he thinks, _to hell with them_. Who gives a shit any more?

He sinks down against the door, hands pressed against his flushed face, as the day's events play in his mind, over and over, the stunned pressure of Kurt's lips like a torture device. He doesn't want to make it to school tomorrow, even if he knows that there's no way that Hummel's going to tell a soul; not if he wants his bones to stay unbroken. Not if he doesn't want his fag dad to be scraping him up from the pavement the next morning.

'cause-

It's not like he's gay or - Damn it. Karofsky slams his head back against the door and hears it rattle in the frame, and the pain that fires through his head is a damn good option compared to the alternative. He hits it again, as if he might be able to knock the memories of that stupid-ass mistake right out of his mind, again and again, until his mom yells up the stairs for him to quiet the hell down. He can still hear his sister crying and he leans forward to lean his head again his knees, his hands capping his ears so that he doesn't have to hear a thing; hearing muffled, eyes closed, he can pretend that he is somewhere altogether different.

Maybe he thinks of Kurt and his annoying family; maybe he wonders what it might've been like if his mom had shacked up with Kurt's dad instead of pansy-assed Finn's.

Maybe he's thinking of awkward family dinners and of grudgingly putting up with Kurt's out-and-proud bullshit every second of the day; maybe he's imagining being pissed off on the surface and enjoying it underneath, or of not having to pretend at all. He's thinking of being able to rest his hand on Kurt's shoulder and not having it be weird.

Mostly, he's thinking of getting to kiss Kurt again without being hit with that look of sickened horror afterwards. Maybe a smile. Isn't too much to ask.

Except it is and it's dumb as fuck and it's not even what he wants, not really, he's smarter than that. Better than that.

"Fuck," he mutters, holding his fist near his mouth as if he could punch the past away.

*

Hummel has himself a fag-ass boyfriend.

Karofsky tells himself that that explains everything. It explains why Kurt's grown a pair lately, and it explains why he didn't kiss him back. It also explains that his taste is short blazered boys with improbably neat hair. That's all it is. There's nothing wrong with Karofsky; there's nothing repulsive about him.

Nothing wrong with him at all.

It doesn't make him feel better, not like it should. Escaping them, he shoves two weedy guys into the lockers, just 'cause he can and 'cause he should because that's what guys like him do. It doesn't feel as good as it usually does, lording it over them. His eyes burn like he's been splashed with acid and all he wants is to get out of there, to wash his mind of the sight of Hummel and his dumbass new boyfriend.

He wants to imagine the pair of them bleeding, dying, wants to imagine making them eat their bullshit words, but in the end he doesn't want to imagine any of that at all. His own brain isn't making sense any more, and what he really wishes is that he could make it all stop. Make his thoughts stops, the world stop. Make himself normal again.

One of his friends mentions a party going on that night, invites him out, and Karofsky tells him to get lost.

"What?"

He doesn't stick around to say anything more, and doesn't bother laughing it off - even though, yeah, that's their kind of humour. Insults with hidden teeth.

He skips class again and leaves school instead of going to lunch. Going home isn't an option so he loiters in town instead, treading the sidewalk with his head hanging low, shoulders curled in, hands in fists in his pockets. His heart won't stop racing, and he can't think of what he's supposed to do next; where the hell does he go from here?

*

As it turns out, he just has to follow the script.

Hummel transfers and after that it's easier to get his head clear, to get back on track. He hooks up with a steady stream of cheerleaders, and it's good. Fine. It gets him off quickly enough and none of them seem to mind that he's not too interested in the ins-and-outs of it all.

Graduation goes as smoothly as can be expected at this school, and then they are thrust out into the world: unprepared and unready. Karofsky has never really had any plans other than "get the hell out of town", but even that doesn't work out. He's stuck in place, sinking deeper, and it carries on as time goes by until it is hard to breathe, too much pressure on his chest.

He gets a job, nothing fancy, and settles down with the girl who runs the phones and the front desk. They're married within a year, and when Karofsky holds her hand he can imagine that this is exactly what he wants, that this is what he has always been aiming for. They're young, too young, but pretty soon Sal is making sounds about the future, about children, and all he does is shrug as if it doesn't really matter. He wants what she wants; it's easier that way.

It's like floating. He closes his eyes and lets the current take him where it will, and he might not be happy but they are content.

And then he has to leave town for a training course. It's just for one weekend, but it's enough. They have bars in the big city, places for people like _him_ , places with bright neon lights and music and dangerously tight jeans.

Maybe he's worried about going, worried about the consequences, but it's one freaking night and it's been a long time. Sal never needs to know.

He slips into the crowd of men, and the sight of it alone makes him swallow, mouth dry, makes his thoughts run wild. _Fags, fairies_ , he thinks, and it is hard to make himself stop: it is almost impossible to process that he is one of them.

(because he's not like that, it's different; he can control himself and they can't and that makes him better than them, damn it)

Lurking near the bar, he orders a beer and holds onto the glass so tightly that it is a wonder it doesn't shatter. He won't speak to a soul, glowering instead, and no one will approach him due to the darkness painted on his face. He isn't small and delicate like the others floating around to the music, so he nurses his drink and pretends that he doesn't give a shit anyway, that he wouldn't touch them if they begged - but his attention is grabbed and his stomach drops as he catches sight of one of the many people he was hoping never to run into again.

Mouth dry, he swallows large mouthfuls of his beer without taking his eyes off of Kurt Hummel, away on the opposite side of the bar. Looking at him from a distance is like trying to see through fog; the air here is thick and dark and filled with flying hormones.

Kurt looks almost exactly as Karofsky remembers him, and he is just as neatly pressed and effortlessly glamorous as Karofsky remembers bullying him for in high school. His behaviour hadn't changed a thing, then. He had pushed Hummel into lockers and threatened his life and thrown him into dumpsters, and the kid's come out as strong and as flaming as ever. There is a strong glow in his chest and Karofsky doesn't want to examine it, doesn't want to look at it too closely; he never did in high school, and now is no time to start.

He stays back and watches Kurt from a distance. He jealously drinks in the sight of him with his friends as they chat and flirt and eventually dance. Hummel isn't a graceful dancer, but there is a lack of self-consciousness in the way that he and his friends leap around to the beat that makes Karofsky want to hate him all over again, because it's not fair - Hummel gets to be the open faggot with the flaming lifestyle while Karofsky slaves away at home, chained to the heterosexual ideal. He has a long list of sins that he did to deserve this fate, but that doesn't mean that he has to like it - not at times like this, when all that he isn't allowed to have dances in front of him.

It might be enough just to look, he thinks. It is like staring through department store windows at the Christmas displays; depressing even as it is stunning.

*

He goes home to his sweet wife and when he slips into bed with her she smiles in sleepy contentment. "You're back early," she says, curling against his chest.

He presses his lips against her shoulder and closes his eyes, allowing the scent of her skin to overpower him. It's nice and it's normal and he pretends that it's enough to make him happy. Maybe he doesn't know the difference any more. "I missed you," he murmurs, and it's true; he's missed feeling safe, feeling lied to.

They make love in the dusky shadows of their secluded bedroom, and he keeps his eyes closed and doesn't think of anything at all - especially not Hummel, especially not the life he never had and the person he never was. He closes his eyes as he pumps in Sal, and he tells him that this is it, that he's done dreaming, done looking, done pretending.

He fucks her and he lies like always, even to himself.


End file.
